Court opinions

A 16-year-old Indianapolis girl was improperly adjudicated a child in need of services, and her mother should not have been
subject to Department of Child Services oversight, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday.

A man who challenged the seizure of $25,000 in suspected drug money and its transfer to federal authorities lost his appeal,
but the Indiana Court of Appeals was troubled by the state’s failure to provide him notice of the request for the transfer.

A defendant’s trial counsel was deficient by not advising his client about the risk of deportation following a guilty
plea, but the defendant wasn’t prejudiced by the performance, the Indiana Court of Appeals concluded.

The Indiana Court of Appeals found police acted improperly in swabbing a teen’s penis to obtain DNA evidence and that
the trial court erred in admitting this test into evidence, but that the error was harmless.

The Indiana Department of Environmental Management’s decision to issue a permit to the city of Hobart to operate a new
wastewater treatment plant was not arbitrary, capricious or otherwise contrary to law, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled.

In a combined appeal, the Indiana Court of Appeals found Marion County was the proper venue to try a defendant’s invasion
of privacy charges. Dewayne Jones claimed prosecutors couldn’t prove his victims were in Marion County when he called
them, a violation of a no-contact order.

The Indiana Court of Appeals found a man’s question, “Can I get a lawyer?” during police questioning unambiguously
and unequivocally invoked his Fifth Amendment right to counsel, so the trial court erred in denying the man’s motion
to suppress statements he made to police.

A company that was subcontracted by another subcontractor for work on a plant construction project won’t be paid from
a payment bond the subcontractor obtained because of a pay-if-paid clause in subcontractors’ contract.

On the appeal of a woman’s conviction of possession of marijuana, the state conceded that the traffic stop that led
to the discovery of the drug was invalid. The Indiana Court of Appeals accordingly reversed the conviction.

The Indiana Court of Appeals reversed the denial of a couple’s motion for relief from judgment and request for attorney
fees in a foreclosure dispute, finding the couple established the party seeking to foreclose on their property acted in bad
faith.

The Indiana Court of Appeals found the trial court did not err in admitting the deposition testimony of a witness in a murder
case who refused to testify at trial and whom the defendant had a chance to examine at the deposition.

A defendant’s argument that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when police searched his vehicle and found pills
failed because the man abandoned his vehicle after the traffic stop. By fleeing, he relinquished any reasonable expectation
of privacy in the car, the Indiana Court of Appeals held.

The Indiana Court of Appeals affirmed the denial of a man’s petition for post-conviction relief, finding neither his
trial nor appellate counsel were ineffective in his case involving a voluntary manslaughter conviction.

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that employees asking to be compensated for changing into safety clothing and walking
to their work stations are undermining the efforts of the union that represents them.

Stacy Sheedy, the Indianapolis attorney and accountant who pleaded guilty to theft charges for misappropriating nearly $600,000
from a guardianship account and family trust, was sentenced to eight years in prison Thursday.

The search of the car driven by a defendant violated the Fourth Amendment, the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled, so the trial
court abused its discretion in admitting evidence obtained through an inventory search of the car.

A dispute between family members over stock of the family company led to the Indiana Court of Appeals addressing an issue
involving shareholders and revocable trusts that hasn’t yet been addressed in Indiana: whether the settlor, who places
shares of stock into a revocable inter vivos trust and names himself as trustee and beneficiary, retains his shareholder status.